He became a prominent figure of nineteenth-century Australian science and became involved in significant issues of Australian and New Guinea history.[5] Writing letters to Australian papers, Miklouho-Maclay expressed his opposition to the labour and slave trade ("blackbirding") in Australia, New Caledonia and the Pacific, as well as his opposition to the British and German colonial expansion in New Guinea.[6] While in Australia, he built the first biological research station in the Southern Hemisphere, was elected to the Linnean Society of New South Wales, was instrumental in establishing the Australasian Biological Association, stayed at the elite Australian Club, became the intimate of the leading amateur scientist and political figure Sir William Macleay, and married the daughter of the Premier of New South Wales.[6] His three grandsons have all contributed to the public life of Australia.[5]

One of the earliest followers of Charles Darwin, Miklouho-Maclay is also remembered today as a humanist scholar who, on the basis of his comparative anatomical research, was one of the first anthropologists to refute the prevailing view that the different 'races' of mankind belonged to different species.

My ancestors came originally from the Ukraine, and were Zaporogg-cossacks of the Dnieper. After the annexation of the Ukraine, Stepan, one of the family, served as sotnik (a superior Cossack officer) under General Count Rumianzoff, and having distinguished himself at the storming of the Turkish fortress of Otshakoff, was by ukase of Catherine II created a noble...

Nicholas' mother, Ekaterina Semenovna, née Bekker, was of German and Polish descent (her three brothers took part in the January Uprising of 1863). After 1873, the Miklouho-Maclay family (on the mother's side)[7] owned a country estate in Malyn, 150 kilometres (93 mi) northwest of Kiev in a geographic region of Polesia.

Nicholas was baptised on 21 July 1846 by priest Ioann Smirnov at the Shegrinskaya Church of Nikolaos the Wonderworker. His godfather was Nicholas Ridigier, a Borovichi landowner and a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, participant of the Battle of Borodino.

Ernst Haeckel with his assistant, Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay, in the Canary Islands, 1866.

In 1858 Nicholas enrolled into the third grade of a German Lutheran school at the Saint Anna Kirche in Saint Petersburg. During his studies at the Second Saint-Petersburg Gymnasium (1859-1863) along with his brother Sergei, he was arrested and kept for several days in the Peter and Paul Fortress for participating in student protests. The young students were saved by the Russian writer Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy who was a friend of Nicholas' father. In 1863 without finishing the gymnasium, Nicholas enrolled as a free listener to the St. Petersburg University but only spent two months, due to being expelled in February 1864 and debarred from tertiary education in Imperial Russia for "breaking the rules".[3][7] In March of the same year with a forged passport, he moved abroad to complete his studies in German universities and this provided an opportunity to study and to work with leading European scientists. He studied humanities at Heidelberg, medicine at Leipzig, and zoology at the University of Jena, where he came under the influence of the great German scholar Ernst Haeckel, who had a profound influence on his future.[6]

Miklouho-Maclay's brilliant student records attracted the attention of Haeckel, who made him his assistant as part of a field expedition to the Canary Islands in 1866. There Miklouho-Maclay took an interest in sharks and sponges and discovered a new sponge species, which he named Guancha blanca, in tribute to the Guanches, the original Berber inhabitants of the Canary Islands.[4] He also became a close friend of the biologist Anton Dohrn, with whom he helped conceive the idea of research stations while staying with him at Messina, Italy.[3]

The Marine Biological Station (centre of photo) at Watson's Bay circa 1881.

Miklouho-Maclay, ca. 1880 in Queensland, Australia. A typically posed shot from the period to emphasise the "explorer" persona — note the Eucalyptus leaves, and explorer "tools".

Miklouho-Maclay left St Petersburg for Australia on the steam corvetteVityaz. He arrived in Sydney on 18 July 1878. A few days after arriving, he approached the Linnean Society and offered to organise a zoological centre. In September 1878 his offer was approved. The centre, known as the Marine Biological Station, was constructed by prominent Sydney architect, John Kirkpatrick. This facility, located in Watsons Bay on the east side of the Greater Sydney, was the first marine biological research institute in Australia.[12] He married Margaret-Emma, widowed daughter of the Premier of New South Wales, John Robertson.[13]

In scientific and anthropological circles during the 1850s and 1860s there was much discussion connected with the study of human races and the interpretation of racial peculiarities. There were some anthropologists like Samuel Morton, who tried to prove that not all human races are of equal worth, and that "white people" are predestined by "natural selection" to rule over the "coloured" races. This attitude was used to justify slavery and colonialism.[14]

Scientists like Ernst Haeckel, a teacher of the young Miklouho-Maclay, relegated what they regarded as culturally "backward" people like Papuans, Bushmen and others to the role of 'intermediate links' between Europeans and their animal ancestors. While adhering to Darwin's theory of evolution, Miklouho-Maclay diverged from these racist concepts, and it was this question that led Miklouho-Maclay to gather scientific facts and to study the dark-skinned inhabitants of New Guinea. On the basis of his comparative anatomical research, Miklouho-Maclay was one of first anthropologists to refute polygenism and scientific racism, the view that the different races of mankind belonged to different species and that some human races were inferior.[5][14]

You were the first to demonstrate beyond question by your experience that man is man everywhere, that is, a kind, sociable being with whom communication can and should be established through kindness and truth, not guns and spirits. I do not know what contribution your collections and discoveries will make to the science for which you serve, but your experience of contacting the primitive peoples will make an epoch in the science for which I serve i. e. the science which teaches how human beings should live with one another.

In 1887 he left Australia and returned to St Petersburg to present his work to the Imperial Russian Geographical Society, taking his young family with him. Miklouho-Maclay was in poor health at this time and it was a trip from which he did not return.[17] Despite treatment from Sergei Botkin, Miklouho-Maclay died of an undiagnosed brain tumour, aged 42, in St Petersburg. He was buried in the Volkovo Cemetery, and left his skull to the St Petersburg Military and Medical Academy.

Miklouho-Maclay's widow returned to Sydney with their children. Until 1917 the scientist's family received a Russian pension. The money was first allocated by Alexander III and then by Nicholas II. One of his sons, Alexander, married a daughter of R. E. O'Connor.

Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay is commemorated in the scientific name of the New Guinea tree species Pouteria maclayana,[18] in the banana species Musa maclayi,[19] and in the land snail species Canefriula maclayiana[20] which where among some of the species he discovered. The weevil Rhinoscapha maclayi was first collected by Miklouho-Maclay and was then named after him by his friend William Macleay.[21]

Other species named after Nicholas Miklouho-Maclay include: Colastomion maclayi (a wasp from New Guinea),[22]Dysmicoccus maclayi (a scale insect from New Guinea)[23]

The Marine Biological Station in Watson's Bay, built and used by Miklouho-Maclay was commandeered by the Ministry of Defence in 1899 as a barracks for officers. In the 1980s the Miklouho-Maclay Society unsuccessfully lobbied for the centre to be made into a historical landmark in memory of Miklouho-Maclay's scientific work. Today, although owned by the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust, the building is used as a private residence and only open to the public on special occasions.[25]

The Miklouho-Maclay Society succeeded in naming a park in his honour in Snails Bay (Birchgrove), not far from a house where he lived in Sydney for a time.[26][27][28][29][30]

A bust of Miklouho-Maclay was unveiled in front of the Macleay Museum at the University of Sydney to commemorate 150 years of his death.[5] The Macleay Miklouho-Maclay Fellowship is available from the University of Sydney[15] each year.

^English variations of his name include: Nicolai Nicolaevich de Miklouho-Maclay1,2, Baron de Miklouho-Maklai which he used in letter writing, and others. In scientific literature, especially where he discovered sponge species, his surname is cited as Miklucho-Maclay.

^Gavrilov-Zimin, I. (2013). "New scale insects (Homoptera:Coccinea) from Sulawesi and New Guinea, with some other additions to the Indonesian fauna". Tropical Zoology26 (2): 64–86. doi:10.1080/03946975.2013.807570.